Why Did Honda Discontinue The Element?

The Honda Element arrived onto the scene with the 2003 model year. This squared-off and somewhat retro-looking crossover was based upon the already hugely popular Honda CR-V platform, but it took an entirely different and more adventurous approach. The blocky styling was polarizing, but the Honda Element was actually a pretty great car. The design paired rear-hinged doors at the back with a fold-down tailgate and a completely customizable interior, which offered buyers up to 64 different interior configurations – including one in which the seats lay flat to create a bed.

This fun design was supposed to be youthful and therefore attract a younger audience of adventurous twenty-somethings to Honda's showroom floors. Honda themselves outlined that the model was aimed squarely at "young, active buyers" before its official release, with Tom Elliott, the then-American Honda executive vice president, stating, "There is a whole new generation of buyers, 71 million strong, entering the automotive market." He adds "The Element is designed for those who surf, snowboard, mountain bike and just about anything else. Right now they're trying to adapt to cars, trucks, and SUVs, but there is no one vehicle that meets their needs."

Here lies the issue with the Element, and the reason for its eventual discontinuation in 2011. While the Element was designed to appeal to younger audiences, with an MSRP of $16,100 at launch – that's over $28,000 in 2025 – it was largely unaffordable for those it was designed to captivate in the first place.

Not only did the Honda Element price itself too high for the carefree and adventurous youth it so needed to captivate, it also found itself appealing to an entirely different, and much older, audience. According to data published by Autoweek early in the Element's life, the average age of an Element's owner was 41 — a far cry from the twenty-somethings the Japanese giant was hoping to attract. Despite promotional material showing skateboarding kids and Elements loaded up with kayaks and surfboards, the model attracted fewer buyers under 25 years old than both the Nissan Xterra and the Honda model range as a whole.

In the first few years of production, the Element managed to sell more than 50,000 units annually. Impressive, but a far cry from the 75,000 units targeted by Honda bosses, and the numbers would drop dramatically from 2007 onward. Honda sold 35,000 in '07, followed by 26,000 in '08, before dropping as low as 11,000 in 2011. With numbers dropping fast, the decision was made in 2011 to discontinue the Element at this point, despite a major facelift in 2009.

No doubt it's one of the weirdest Hondas ever designed, but in 2025, the Honda Element is fast becoming something of a modern-classic, gaining fans for its versatility, useability, and immense practicality. Buyers are paying big money for the finest examples – upwards of $40,000 in some cases — demonstrating a resurgence of interest in the dare-to-be-different Honda.